UserConf 2014

A chain of events was triggered at Axosoft when our CEO, Hamid Shojaee, asked, “What if we had everyone in the company responding to chat requests? Would this be a good or bad idea and why?” One of our support team members, James, responded by sharing a video from UserConf 2012, where Wufoo’s Kevin Hale discussed the idea of All Hands on Support. We took time the very next day for our entire company to watch this video and talk about it. As a result, Axosoft recently flew the entire support team and our Product Owner to San Francisco for UserConf 2014. It was a killer conference, and we took away a lot of great ideas!

Answer the damn email!

Alex Mozes, Director of Customer Support at Udemy, spoke about his research that indicated users who receive a response within 20-30 minutes are impressed by the response time. What I found interesting was that customer happiness was not affected when they received a response 40 minutes to 4 hours later. Meaning they were only impressed in that first window. This rang very true to me. The first and most important thing is to respond to our customers as quickly as we can.

Stop using canned lines

Users know when you are using a canned line. It makes them think you do not care, and that you are reading from a script or following a set process. I took this very seriously and started talking to my customers as I would want to be spoken to. The results were interesting. Instead of using fluffy words and long drawn out explanations, I was direct, concise and used wording that was personal. User response was quite positive. They appreciated my direct explanations and expressed that they were impressed with the support response.

All Hands on Support vs. Dev on Point

After watching that great video I referenced earlier, All Hands on Support, we agreed as a company to implement this idea. Well, that didn’t go so well. When trying to implement it we were met with statements like “I don’t have enough time” or “What good does one day do anyway – It’s not like I can change anything in one day.” This leads me to the Dev on Point idea presented at the conference. Dev on Point is one developer available for user support for an entire week. They are the point person for all departments for that week. This is a solution we think might be more viable for our support and dev teams moving forward!

So long and thanks for all the fish!

There were many great speakers and ideas shared at the conference, and it was really awesome to be among so many different people who play various roles in support. Every person I talked to was happy to share their experiences and ideas. The whole thing felt like a massive collaborative effort to improve what we love to do!